to him.
Hallheimer found other customers already there. For a time the road was
blocked with vehicles. Two peasants stood watching Stephen, who was
mending their broken pole with a metal ring. Beyond them, a woman sat,
on a wagon loaded with vegetables, waiting for the smith to shoe her
mare who had gone lame.

"Good evening, Stephen," said the trader, and received a curt
greeting in return. Then Fausch drove the last nail into the pole of
the peasants' wagon. As he stood erect again, the brilliant purity of
the evening seemed, as it were, to recoil from his grimy figure. No
brightness appeared on his swarthy face surrounded with the thick black
beard. His flannel shirt, trousers and leather apron, and even his arms
and hands were as dark as the inside of his workshop, whose dinginess
he seemed, as it were, to wear on his person. And the grimy fellow, who
seemed really an insult to the sunset glow, stood there like a tree
trunk, taller and broader than any one else on the road.

"You can harness up," said he to the peasants, who at once went to
bring their poor old nags from a hitching post near by. The vegetable
woman began to unharness her little horse; but Stephen did not concern
himself about her. He turned to the trader.

"You have come over the mountains from Italy?" he asked.

Hallheimer held out his hand, which the smith took, at the same time
glancing at the wagon and inspecting the horses.

"I haven't any work for you today," said the trader, "I only thought I
would pass a word with you."

"The gray has a shoe loose," said Stephen, untying the horse he had
pointed out.

"Never mind. He can easily go as far as the stable," said the other,
declining the proffered aid; but Stephen was already leading the
creature to the ring in the wall, where he tied him. So the little man
got down from the wagon, laughing to himself, and let the smith have
his own way. He knew Stephen. Whatever he took into his head, he must
do. Many complained of him for this reason. He never asked what work he
should do, but took it in hand himself, and did it according to his own
ideas, no matter if the customers told him ten times over that they
wanted it done differently.

Meanwhile the woman on the vegetable wagon was growing uneasy. "Hallo,
smith," she called out, "I came here first. You must take my horse
first!"

"That's so," said Hallheimer goodnaturedly, "she did come first."

"After I've done with this, or not at all,"